


Like A Bird On A Branch

by starriestofgates



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Sex, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 02:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20499710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starriestofgates/pseuds/starriestofgates
Summary: Laigle de Meaux, as the reader knows, lived more with Joly than elsewhere. He had a lodging, as a bird has one on a branch.Lesgle goes to stay at Joly's and finds more than he expected there.





	Like A Bird On A Branch

**Author's Note:**

> My thought has always been that, although Lesgle answers to Bossuet from his friends, and enjoys the joke, he probably thinks of himself as Lesgle, in various spellings. Which is why that's how I've done it in this fic.

Lesgle arranged the coins on the bureau in a neat line and counted them again. The tally was the same as the first counting, and it absolutely was not enough to cover the next quarter’s rent. The proprietor, who was watching him count, shook his head.

“It’s no good, son,” he said. “I’ve given you a week’s grace already to come up with the money and there are several people after a room in this building. I can’t afford to let you stay here anymore.”

It was hardly Lesgle’s first eviction, but it was still a bit annoying, especially given that it was getting on in the evening. He packed his small valise with a few items of clothing and personal effects, hoping he would find Joly at home. The proprietor was kind enough to allow him to leave his traveling trunk, with the rest of his meager possessions inside, in the care of the porter overnight. Lesgle assured both men that he would be back to pick it up the next day.

The street outside his former lodgings was unusually bare of any kind of conveyance for hire, though there always seemed to be plenty when he wasn’t looking for one. Lesgle considered the scanty number of sous in his purse and decided that walking was the better option anyway. During the half year that he had been living at his now-previous address, he had seldom walked directly from his own to Joly’s place. He had been there plenty of times, but typically there had been at least one stopover on the way, such as dinner at the Corinthe. He had forgotten what a long walk it really was. He was now reminded.

It had been threatening rain for some time, and now the threat was being realized. As the first fat drops pattered down on Lesgle’s hat and shoulders, he belatedly realized that his umbrella was among the items he had left with the porter for safekeeping. “Of course,” he said aloud. Glumly he calculated the distance he had yet to cover and how wet and disheveled he would probably be by the time he arrived.

The wetness-and-disheveledness calculations proved to have been slightly on the optimistic side; Lesgle was grateful that Joly’s portress already knew him. She allowed him entrance without comment, though he could feel her judgment at the state of his clothing. He made his way up the stairs in the dark, feeling bedraggled.

“Bossuet!” Joly greeted him. He was dressed only in a nightshirt, and Lesgle felt slightly guilty. “Were you already sleeping?” he said.

“No, not at all. I was only just getting ready for bed. You are entirely _drenched,_" Joly remarked, ushering him in. “Been evicted again, have we? Is that valise all you’ve got with you?”

“Yes, and, yes. The rest of my things I left with the porter at my former residence for safekeeping, for the moment. I hope to find a new residence soon, not to impose on you for too long…”

“As if you were ever an imposition on me. Stay as long as you like. If you leave too soon, I shall begin to think you do not like me anymore. In fact, I forbid it,” Joly said lightly. “Have you a nightshirt in your valise? You’ll catch cold if you sit around in those wet clothes, and then you will give it to me, and then we shall both be miserable. I shall assume you have had no dinner…one moment…”

Lesgle extracted his nightshirt from his valise, struggled out of his damp garments, and pulled the blessedly dry linen over his head. Before he had time to do anything else Joly returned and shoved him into a chair by the fire, handing him a sizable chunk of bread and butter. “You’re not to stir or utter another word until you’ve finished that,” he said, putting a kettle on the fire. Lesgle obediently set to work on the bread, feeling fussed over and rather enjoying it. He watched Joly poking the fire up before draping his wet clothing over a rod to dry and was cast back briefly in his mind to the long-gone days when he would come home from school, wet and cold, and his mother would do the kind of things that Joly was doing now. Home-things. Joly is like coming home, he thought, and the thought felt so natural that it did not occur to him to wonder what it meant.

Joly flung himself into the chair opposite Lesgle and grinned at him. “You must tell me in the morning,” he said, “whether the new position of my bed agrees with you. I have arranged it so that it aligns with the poles, which ought to aid in the circulation of the blood.”

“I don’t understand any of that, but I shall endeavor to supply you with whatever information you require,” Lesgle replied. “But speaking of information, did I tell you about the ridiculous thing that Dupont did in class on Tuesday?”

They gossiped amiably for a few minutes, sharing stories of the pranks and mishaps of the other students in their respective colleges, until the kettle began to boil. Joly hopped up to make the tea, refusing an offer of help and fussing affectionately as he pushed a steaming cup into Lesgle’s hands. Lesgle thanked him and sipped carefully at it, wincing slightly at the heat. He was a habitual drinker of coffee, not of the more expensive and bourgeois tea, but it was a pleasant treat nonetheless.

Joly collected his own cup and resettled himself as Lesgle blew into his drink, trying to cool it before chancing another sip. He half shut his eyes, enjoying the delicate flavor. When he opened them wider again, he realized that Joly was watching him with an intense and unfamiliar look on his face. Lesgle had believed himself well-versed in all of the looks that Joly’s face ordinarily wore; this one puzzled him. He was conscious of a mild but strange tension building. Hoping to break it and restore normality, he smiled and said, “This tea is delightful. Where do you purchase it?” He knew perfectly well that he would never go to the trouble and expense of buying any himself, but the prosaic sally worked---Joly’s face resumed its usual cheer as he named a shop Lesgle had never set foot inside and doubted he ever would.

After a bit more light conversation, they lapsed into a companionable silence over their teacups. For all that Joly had said he was about to go to bed earlier, he seemed in no great hurry to get there. Lesgle felt an easy sort of lassitude steal over him. It had been a very long and wearying day, and the chair was very comfortable. He idly swirled the remains of the tea in his cup, watching the tiny brief whirlpool spin itself out. When he looked up again, Joly was regarding him with that strange, unreadable expression on his face again. They looked at each other without speaking as the moments stretched out into a return of that peculiar tension, only there was nothing this time to clear it away and restore order.

Joly was the first to break off, turning his head slightly and clearing his throat. “I, ah, believe it’s about time I retired for the night,” he said, trying and failing to speak lightly. “You needn’t yet, if you’d rather sit up a bit…”

“No, it’s been a long day,” Lesgle said, rising as Joly did, feeling both oddly relieved and oddly disappointed for no reason he could pinpoint. They both climbed into Joly’s bed, Joly next to the wall as he always preferred, though the bed was up against a different wall now than it had been previously. Magnetism, Lesgle thought, and felt almost like laughing, not in mockery but from affection. Usually, regardless of how tired they were, they chatted a little in bed before falling asleep, but Joly did not seem in a chatty mood. He lay stiff on his back, limbs pulled in, rather than sprawling out or curling up on his side, which was, Lesgle thought, likely not an indication of a happy Joly. He sat back up and lightly poked his friend’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

Joly turned his head away. “It’s late,” he said. “Go to sleep, Bossuet.”

“That is not an answer.” Lesgle poked him again.

“Stop it.” Joly brushed his hand away and rolled over, and that was certainly not an indication of a happy Joly, because a happy Joly, or at any rate a non-troubled Joly, would have sat up and poked Lesgle back, or pulled his arm to make him lie down.

“Joly.”

“It is nothing. Leave it alone.” A slight unevenness in the tone confirmed it: not a happy Joly. But he was happy earlier, Lesgle thought. Is it something I have done, or did my coming distract him from thoughts of some misfortune that he has now recalled? Whichever it was, leaving it did not seem like a particularly acceptable option. He put his hand on Joly’s shoulder and said, “My dear…” He had meant to say “my dear fellow,” but his throat tightened when he realized Joly was shivering slightly.

Joly rolled back over abruptly. Lesgle kept his hand on his shoulder, and Joly glanced down at it before looking up at Lesgle. It was difficult to read his expression in the dimness, but his eyes seemed enormous, wide as the sky. “My dear,” Joly said, in a kind of breathless tone.

Lesgle was experiencing an odd amalgamation of emotions. He vaguely identified tenderness, awkwardness, uncertainty, a hazy but urgent need to mend whatever was wrong. Irony generally rolled off his tongue with more fluency than earnestness, but here in the dark with Joly he felt he could not but be earnest. He cleared his throat. “Do not the priests say that we should bear one another’s burdens?” he said. “You are helping me to bear my burden of being evicted. May I not equally help you to bear the burden of whatever it is that is troubling you?” His eyes had adjusted somewhat to the dimness, and he could more clearly see Joly’s face, which looked, worryingly, as if he was about to cry. Responding purely by instinct, Lesgle leaned down and kissed his cheek. Joly emitted a small strangled whimper, reached up to take Lesgle’s face between his hands, and pressed his lips to his. Lesgle was startled for perhaps half a second; then it was as though a voice at the back of his mind said, oh, of course, why didn’t I think of it before, and he set his hands on either side of Joly to support himself, kissing him back with fervor.

They broke apart, Joly breathing shallow and quick. He dropped his hands onto his own chest and stared at Lesgle as if he had never actually quite seen him before. Lesgle smiled down at him, feeling giddy. “My dear,” he said again. Joly scrabbled his legs a bit and sat up quickly; Lesgle had to move backwards to avoid a collision. “Your eyes are the size of dinner plates,” he said fondly. “Is _this_ what was troubling you, or is there something else?” 

“Well. No. That is…you are right.”

“My Joly. My _joli_ Joly. You are making no sense.”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

“Well, then. Yes. This.”

“And now?” Joly made no reply, only watched him almost warily. Lesgle put out his hand and smoothed the fine brown hair standing up in disarray. He allowed his fingers to trace a line, feather-light, down the side of Joly’s face and neck, coming to rest in the hollow at the base of his throat. He described a small circle there with a fingertip, then sat back and waited.

Joly clasped his hands in his lap and looked down at them for a long moment. Then he looked up at Lesgle again, and his eyes shone in the dimness. “My eagle,” he said, and held out his arms. Lesgle smiled and went to them.

Afterwards they lay hazily together in a tangle of limbs, Joly’s face pressed into Lesgle’s neck. Lesgle idly twisted his fingers in Joly’s hair and reflected that perhaps it was not always so bad to be evicted. He could not help chuckling a little. Joly freed a hand and gently poked his cheek with one fingertip. “What is so funny?” he inquired. 

“I was only thinking that fortune appears to have suddenly taken a turn in my favor, for a change. I do not know how I will adjust to it. It seems unnatural.”

“Think of it as fortune taking a turn in _my_ favor, then,” Joly suggested drowsily. “Perhaps it will seem more natural then. You are sharing _my_ good fortune. I feel as if I have enough for two, just now…” He touched his lips to Lesgle’s throat. Lesgle hugged him extremely tightly in response, causing Joly to squeak and then pinch him, which prompted Lesgle to tickle Joly unmercifully until Joly grabbed his pillow and hit him on the head with it. Lesgle collapsed back onto the bed laughing, and Joly flopped down next to him and joined in. 

When they had regained some semblance of calm, Lesgle reached out and pulled Joly close, back to chest, and curled himself around him. Joly tucked Lesgle’s arm firmly around his waist and laced their fingers together against his stomach. He sighed and was very quickly asleep. Lesgle, lingering half-awake a little longer, shut his eyes and skimmed the back of Joly’s head with a kiss, breathing in the fine, clean scent of his hair. His last conscious thought was that if this was Joly’s good fortune, then sharing in it was surely the best fortune his own life could ever see.


End file.
